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If you thought the perceived backlash over Jodie Whittaker's casting was bad enough, it was as nothing to the vitriol
that greeted Ncuti Gatwa. The "anti-woke" brigade must have had a field day with a queer black man, who came to the UK as
a refugee from genocide in Rwanda - easy to accuse the BBC of diversity box-ticking with such a combination! Never mind that
Gatwa may have given the best audition. It doesn't help that his era of Doctor Who has been perceived as a failure by
a lot of the public. (Which isn't necessarily true - yes, ratings were low but this is symptomatic of a crash in traditional tv
ratings across the industry as tv shifts to a non-linear streaming model.) I would contend that his seasons have been an artistic
failure, but that's more to do with the writing and the tone than the actor himself. Gatwa is charismatic and plays the Doctor with
raw open emotions. A different take on the character, but he would be fine if he was given decent material to work with. Don't get me
wrong, there were some truly great episodes in Gatwa's seasons, but there were also some shockingly bad ones, compounded by confusing
and ill-thought out story arcs, character threads that started and seemed to go nowhere - and some yet to be fully understood behind
the scenes shenanigans that saw the Doctor's companion dumped after one season and what was presumably supposed to be part of her arc
bolted onto a new character. They also had to work around Gatwa's lack of availability which saw him practically absent from several
episodes (and ironically those episodes turning out to be among the best). The show was made by an independent production company run by
several former BBC employees who had been responsible for bringing the show back in 2005, along with a deal for the show to be streamed on
Disney Plus, which saw Disney pumping in a lot of budget. The chance was there to relaunch the show as a bright new experience for a global
audience. But they brought back Russell T Davies as chief writer, seemingly without anyone to tell him when his writing didn't make sense.
I've not got a problem with his progressive agendas, I have got a problem with stories that don't make sense. Especially egregious were the
season finales, which both made a big thing of bringing back villains from the classic show without any proper set-up or explanation for the
new audience - yet also so fundamentially changing their nature that long-time fans would be just as pissed off.
Obviously things didn't work out. Disney didn't renew their funding deal, and Gatwa seems to have bailed out when he had previously intimated
that he would do a third season. Rapid reshoots tied everything up very unsatisfactorily. (And I'm not even going to mention the closing shot,
which frankly was Russell Davies just taking the piss - I seriously hope the BBC edit it out of the episode in future.) The BBC now have to seek a new
production partner to revive the show in future, but it looks like it's going to be off the air for a while. It really needs a new approach. (And
yes, I appreciate that I was quite dismissive of the Sylvester McCoy years for a long time - so maybe I'll re-evaluate all this in thirty years'
time... We'll see.)
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